Classic Movies - Fabulous Films of 1939: Gone With The Wind

Fabulous Film of 1939
Directed by Victor Fleming


Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara
and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler









Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton

Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy







Today, let’s talk Classic Civil War Epic-GONE WITH THE WIND! We have saved the biggest and best 1939 blockbuster for last. Gone with the Wind, based on Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize winning saga of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, was the winner of an incredible 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and nominated for several more. It is considered by many to be the greatest movie of all time and we heartily agree. It is a beautifully-filmed motion picture with fine performances by the fabulous ensemble cast of Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel, Thomas Mitchell, Butterfly McQueen, Ona Munson, Harry Davenport, and the list goes on. Victor Fleming was credited as the director of the picture although several directors, including George Cukor and Sam Wood, were involved in the making of the film. The majestic musical score, by our favorite film composer, Max Steiner, is superb and lends magnificence to this sweeping tale of the Old South.

There were, of course, many concessions made when bringing the massive novel to the screen. Many beloved characters were omitted from the film, most notably Scarlett’s other two children, Wade (fathered by Charles Hamilton) and Ella (fathered by Frank Kennedy), and Will Benteen, a one-legged soldier who stayed at Tara after the war ended, helped run the farm, and eventually married Scarlett’s sister, SueEllen (played in the film by Evelyn Keyes). Most of Will’s dialogue was given to Mammy (McDaniel) in the movie. We were disappointed by some of these omissions when we first saw Gone with the Wind, after having read the book, but now realize Sidney Howard had to make these cuts in order to move his screenplay along. We still have a problem, however, with the way the deaths of Bonnie (Cammie King) and Melanie (de Havilland) occur almost simultaneously-seemingly only days apart. It was as if the film had to be brought to an abrupt and quick end. In the book, Scarlett was actually out of town (some weeks after Bonnie’s death) when word of Melanie’s illness reached her and she hurried back to Atlanta to be with her. We just don’t understand why the two deaths had to be so rushed together.

Despite the inaccuracies with the book, Gone with the Wind is still our favorite movie and we applaud Producer David O. Selznick and Selznick Studios for even attempting to bring the Civil War epic to the silver screen. The classic love story of Scarlett O’Hara (Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Gable), set amid the turmoil of War and Reconstruction, is timeless. It is just as thrilling and romantic today as it was to audiences in 1939.

In the realm of great fictional characters, Scarlett O’Hara was indeed a formidable heroine. She saw what she had to do in order to survive and did it! For the sake of those depending on her she defied convention, took the bull by the horns, and moved forward into an uncertain future. In a day and age when women were not considered bright enough to succeed in business, she did. She paid a price for her actions and was not always liked or admired by “genteel society”. Hopefully audiences understood that she had no choice in “wearing the pants” in the O’Hara family. Once married to Rhett, she could have relinquished many of her responsibilities, but was unable to take a backseat when she was used to holding the reins. Yes, she could have been kinder in her dealings with people and in business, but that kindness fell by the wayside when she clawed her way out of war-induced poverty. She often regretted the loss of her tenderness, wanting to be more like her mother, but would not have changed a thing she had done if she could have. Like her or not, Scarlett O’Hara was a dynamic force to be reckoned with and a true woman of substance.

We highly recommend this fantastic and classic motion picture for your viewing pleasure. Better yet, read the book first to learn more about the Civil War and the interesting background stories of the minor characters. The making of the film is also interesting to read about. The “search for Scarlett O’ Hara” is Hollywood legend. We love Gone with the Wind and have ever since we first saw it in 1969 when it was only shown in theaters. We hope it is or will be one of your favorites, too.

This concludes our segment of posts about the Fabulous Films of 1939. There are still many more that we could talk about, but we’ve tried to bring you some of the very best. We hope you’ve enjoyed them and will continue to read “Let’s Talk Classic Movies” every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

**Trivia Question for Today: If British actress Vivien Leigh had not been cast as Scarlett O’Hara at the last minute, what American actress had Selznick decided to cast in the coveted role?

Trivia Answer for Previous Post: The song Bette Davis sang in Dark Victory was “Oh, Give Me Time for Tenderness”. The voice of Vera Van was dubbed in for Ms. Davis.

Classic Movies of Legendary Couple, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland

Today, let’s talk Classic Movies of Olivia de Havilland! This two-time Academy Award-winning actress is always fabulous in whatever she appears in. Her films with Errol Flynn are a pleasure to watch and will be shared with you in our next post, but today we are focusing on her screen performances without Mr. Flynn. Beginning with her first appearance in Alibi Ike (1935), with funny man, Joe E. Brown, Olivia de Havilland has remained an audience favorite throughout her highly successful career and is one of the few surviving actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930’s. Her most distinctive career accomplishment, however, came in the 1940’s when she brought a lawsuit against Warner Brothers Studios, for whom she had worked for many years. Fighting for more “actor-control” over role choices, Olivia de Havilland scored a major victory for herself and all screen actors when she won the lawsuit. Until that time, actors were at the mercy of the studio system and if they refused to play certain roles, they were often suspended for extended periods of time. That “suspension period” then had to be made up as part of their contract fulfillment. “The de Havilland decision” brought an end to the cattle-like treatment of actors by their studios.

Olivia de Havilland’s classic motion pictures are so many that we will list only a few on this post. That list includes wonderful films such as Anthony Adverse (1936), with Fredric March; It’s Love I’m After (1937), with Bette Davis and Leslie Howard; Gone with the Wind (1939), with Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Leslie Howard (de Havilland was perfectly cast as Melanie Hamilton);

The Strawberry Blonde (1940), a delightful comedy with James Cagney; The Male Animal (1942), with Henry Fonda (another fine comedy); The Dark Mirror (1946), in which she plays dual roles as twins;

The Snake Pit (1948), which takes a harrowing look at mental illness and earned her an Oscar nomination; The Heiress (1949), with Montgomery Clift (the second of her Oscar-winning performances); My Cousin Rachel (1952), with Richard Burton; and Not as a Stranger (1954), with Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra.

Several later films include the classic thriller, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), with Bette Davis; the controversial Lady in a Cage (1964), introducing James Caan; and the exciting Airport ’77 (1977), with Jack Lemmon. All of the above are films we have seen and enjoyed through the years.

The Olivia de Havilland classic we are spotlighting today is the poignantly romantic drama, To Each His Own (1946), with John Lund in his screen debut. This was the film for which Olivia de Havilland won her first Academy Award for best actress and it was definitely well-deserved. As both the young and middle-aged “Jody Norris”, Miss de Havilland shines in a role that has her age approximately 25 years during the course of the film. The story is one of bittersweet remembrance as matronly Miss Norris recalls, in flashback, her youthful, ill-fated romance with a World War I airplane pilot (Lund). That romance resulted in an illegitimate son that was given up for adoption. Only 16 hours of work a day, building a cosmetic empire, would fill the years of loneliness and regret for Miss Norris. Finally, during World War II, the chance comes for her to meet her grown son (also a pilot played by John Lund) and to do “something” for him at last. The entire film is deeply moving and Olivia de Havilland is completely believable and wonderful as Miss Jody Norris. We warmly recommend To Each His Own to anyone who loves fine adult drama. It is one of Olivia de Havilland’s greatest performances.

**Trivia Question for Today: Who is Olivia de Havilland’s Oscar-winning sister?

Trivia Answer for Previous Post: Errol Flynn convincingly portrays self-destructive screen legend and his good friend, John Barrymore, in Too Much, Too Soon, the biopic of Barrymore’s self-destructive daughter, Diana (played by Dorothy Malone).